


Clerical Errors

by Marisolinspades



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: This is my first time posting here I have no idea how to tag this thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 08:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17280383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marisolinspades/pseuds/Marisolinspades
Summary: On the 50th anniversary of the defeat of the Reapers, one of the Normandy Crew gives an interview reflecting on the life of Commander Shepard.





	Clerical Errors

“This won’t be broadcast live, will it?” Penny asked as she set her bag down next to her chair.

“No,” Satomi said, adjusting the settings on her omni-tool while her camera hovered, dormant, over her shoulder. “We aren’t even sure we’ll be allowed to air this. You saw a lot of things that are still considered highly classified. We pulled a lot of strings just to secure this interview without the Alliance giving you a talking-to first, but we still have to give them a look at it before we release it to the public.”

Penny nodded. “Fine, but I get to see it when they’re done with it, and if I don’t like how it makes her look, you’re pulling it.” She wobbled a bit as she lowered herself into her chair, politely waiving off the young man with a makeup brush in his hand who reached out to steady her. “No thank you, I can still manage just fine on my own. I’ve been taking my vitamins.”

He smiled indulgently, then leaned in to apply powder to her cheeks.

Satomi sighed. “That’s not exactly how this works. Once it goes through them it goes to the Network and it really isn’t in my hands any more.”

“Young lady, I don’t have to be here talking to you. I’m only doing this because I want to be. If I don’t get the option to veto what it looks like after the Alliance cuts it to shit, I’m leaving right now and you aren’t getting another word from me.”

The young man hesitated, brush hovering in mid air. The other assistants in the room all froze, waiting.

“I’ll see what I can do.” Satomi finished her final prep and gave a reassuring smile.

“No, not see what you can do.” Penny’s voice was stern and calm with the unwaivering authority of a grade-school teacher. “You agree to it and I get it in writing, or I walk.”

Satomi took a deep breath, steadying herself for an argument. As she started to speak, Penny reached forward and took Satomi’s hand in her own, giving it a small squeeze. “This isn’t meant to be a slight on you, dear, you’re a good journalist. The way you covered Garrus Vakarian’s funeral is the only reason I’m talking to you. Lots of people have asked for this interview, but you, you I like. It’s the network and the tight-wads in the Alliance who I don’t trust.”

“I don’t think any reporter was disrespectful when covering the Vakarian memorial.” Satomi said, sounding incredulous. “He was a hero, and no one wants to pi- upset the Turians.”

“Be that as it may, you were the only one who didn’t use it as an excuse to gossip about his relationship with Commander Shepard before her death. You focused on his life, the good he did for the galaxy during the rebuild after the war, and the undeniable fact that he was, indeed, a hero. And for fucks sake, I’m an old woman, I’ve heard the term, ‘pissed off’ before.” Penny let go of the younger woman’s hand and settled back into her seat.

Satomi gave a startled laugh. “Alright, fine, no one wants to piss off the Turians by insulting Vakarian. Let me see what I can do about giving you veto power.” She nodded to her assistant who had been hovering in the wings and the young woman hurried off into the hallway. Immediately the rest of the crew sprang back into action.

“Thank you.” Penny said, then folded her hands in her lap and sat still as a statue, perfectly content in the silence. Satomi began to fidget with her omni-tool again. After a few minutes, the assistant rushed back in and nodded to Satomi.

“Perfect, thank you Jessa.” Satomi smiled, looking a little relieved. “Here, let me transfer the document to you.” She said, turning back to Penny.

“Thank you, dear.” Penny said. She took a several more minutes to read it over, pretending to be oblivious to the concerned glances the crew was giving each other. Satisfied, she smiled warmly and set the screen aside. “I have added my digital signature and sent it back to your assistant. You may ask your questions now.”

“Do you have any more concerns before we begin?”

“No dear, I’m ready.”

Satomi straightened up and put on her charismatic news-anchor face as her camera hummed to life and her crew scrambled to get out of frame. She took a breath and began, “Good evening. I’m sitting here with Penny Addams, former crew-member of the SSV Normandy, and friend of Commander Shepard. This is her first time breaking her silence in the fifty years since that fateful day back on Earth, and she has agreed to share her story with us tonight. Penny, you have seen a lot in your years. Can you tell us what it was like on the Normandy during the Reaper Invasion?”

“Yes, though the truth is, I didn’t serve on the Normandy, nor any other ship for that matter.” Penny said.

Satomi was good at her job, her confusion only showed briefly on her face. “I’m sorry, I thought you…”

“Oh, I was on the Normandy, but I wasn’t exactly a crew-member. More like a hapless, unintended guest.”

“I see. Well, my records indicate that you were on the ship for almost the duration of the Invasion. Is that true?”

“Yes, dear. You want to know something ironic? My grandfather fought in the Battle of Normandy. He never really talked about it, but he was there. I had to have his service record pulled up after he passed away, but I found his picture in one of the displays in a museum, and that proved it.”

“I”m sorry, your grandfather?”

“Yes, back in the 1940’s.”

“Just how old is your grandfather?” Satomi asked, her laugh not quite genuine as she played to the camera.

“Oh, he was only in his 70s when he passed away.”

“How…”

“It was the cancer, dear, but that’s getting ahead of the story. During the Reaper Invasion things were intense on the Normandy. The crew, those who had been with Shepard for a while and those who had just gotten swept away with her in the rush to get help for Earth, were all trying to focus on the task at hand while simultaneously seeking out any information they could get about their homes, their families, their friends. Everyone was crossing their fingers that they would get confirmation this or that person was safe.”

“It sounds like it was very tough going for everyone on board.” Satomi said.

“It was. You know, there was a saying that sprang up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. People would speak of the vacant lots, darkened store fronts, fields that once had a dozen or so houses, and say, 'It ain’t dere no more’ with this deep reverence in their voices. It was resignation to a force beyond reckoning, mourning for the things everyone lost in the flood. It was a feeling in the gut that everyone shared so deep in their souls, and there was nothing that could bring it back to the way it was before. There was even as song that just listed the nostalgic places that never made it back after the storm, or had tried and crumbled in the ensuing economic crash. Any time something historic fell, people would turn to each other and say, 'We got another ain’t dere no more.’ And within a week the song would get re-written, and folks would sing along with the deep soul blues that only truly grows organic in those parts of the American South.”

“You speak so vividly, it feels like you were there.” Satomi said.

Penny smiled and went on. “Yes, well, during the Reaper Invasion, there were a whole lot of Ain’t Dere No Mores. No one wanted to hear their home town on the list of places hit, but no one was spared. Everyone lost someone. Most lost several someones.

“Information was the most precious commodity, but communication was restricted. The enemy had ears everywhere and a stray message through unsecured channels could mean the family member you were checking in on, and everyone hiding with them, were no longer safe. But people crave each other, you know? It hurts to hear silence when you know what it could mean, so any time anyone got good news it would spread like wildfire. Seeing the relief in a shipmate’s face that their kid brother had been spotted alive and well gave you hope that your own family was still hanging on. Of course, the bad news spread quickly too. Any time someone received a message and got that look of grief on their face, everyone wanted to hear where it was in case they knew someone there, too.

“Mostly, though, there was a lot of talk about the people back home. Talking about your loved ones makes them feel closer, makes them feel safer. Everyone was trying to regain the feel of home what with all that was looming over us.”

“Were you able to keep in touch with your family while you were on the Normandy?” Satomi asked, compassion in her voice.

“I did find family while on the Normandy, but everyone I knew was already dead by the time I was on the ship.”

Satomi’s voice sobered. “My records indicate that you had been raised in a small religious colony that shunned technology. It must have been difficult to leave them behind to join the modern world, only to lose them to the Reapers.”

Penny nodded slowly, started to speak, then seemed to think better of it and sighed. “It was difficult living as an anachronism on arguably the most high-tech naval vessel of its time, when prior to boarding the Normandy the existence of alien life was only speculation as far as I was concerned. I had one set of clothing that had gone out of fashion in the early twenty-first century, I didn’t know what ezo was, and biotics seemed like witchcraft. Commander Shepard helped me learn how to survive, found a way to let me stay on the ship while I got oriented, and checked in on me when she could. I helped out where I was able; I cleaned the toilets, swept the floors, cooked meals, and tried to make things less bleak. I wound up becoming an official member of the USO just so that she had an excuse to let me stay on board. I picked up a guitar and played music for them when there were rare moments of down time just to keep people’s spirits up. I was Commander Shepard’s pity case, but she never made me feel like I wasn’t worth having saved.”

“So now I have to ask, how did you wind up on the Normandy?” Satomi asked.

“Clerical error.” Penny said.

Satomi and several members of her crew chuckled. “You’re going to need to elaborate on that one for me.”

“The important thing was that I was brought on board. Cerberus wanted me for something – information I didn’t have but they were convinced I did – and Shepard and her team only grabbed me because if Cerberus wanted me that bad I must have something valuable, something they could possibly use to stop the Reapers or build the crucible. Something important like that. Instead they got stuck with the only human in the galaxy who didn’t know what a Reaper was. In my first five minutes on the ship I accused Garrus of being an animatronic, and complimented Liara – Dr. T'Soni – on her prosthetics and makeup job.”

Satomi put her hand to her mouth and laughed. “Oh god, I’m sure that didn’t go over well at all.”

“No, not even a little bit. Both were a little offended – and had every right to be mind you – they certainly didn’t know how out of touch I was. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a translator, so when they told me off I couldn’t understand them and instead complimented them on throwing something together that sounded like real languages.”

“I”m sorry, how is that?” Satomi asked.

“You know how in the movies when they have a monster, and it’s speaking something that isn’t a real language, how they usually just throw sounds together? And you can tell it isn’t real speech, because real languages have a cadence to them. It isn’t something most people really think about, but gibberish doesn’t have inflection, it doesn’t come with sentence structure. That’s how we can sometimes even follow the meaning and flow of a conversation between two people when we don’t speak a word of their language. It’s more difficult when trying to follow along in a cross-species conversation, but we can tell that there are similar sounds being repeated, the pronunciation of vowels and consonants has a constant to it. Fortunately that’s what tipped them off that there was something different about my situation. It was Dr. T'Soni who caught on first.”

“So you didn’t even have an omni-tool? How did you communicate with the crew?”

“For the first week or so, I didn’t. Not really. Commander Shepard spoke English, though a different dialect than I was used to, so I could understand her most of the time. She was kind enough to cut back on the slang for me. Dr. T'Soni speaks English as well – she’s fluent in several languages. One of the engineers was conversational. Joker, you know him as pilot Jeff Moreau, and Lieutenant James Vega also spoke variants of the language, so them I could understand. Oh, and of course EDI, the ship’s AI. She downloaded a program and became fluent in the dialect native to where I grew up. Aside from that, no, I couldn’t really understand anyone. They could understand me, of course, though I was often accused of speaking overly-formally because of my archaic speech. I had to rely on EDI to translate for me.

“But those first few minutes were a mess. I didn’t even realize I was on a space ship. I was confused, surrounded, and everyone was armed. I mean, they didn’t look like any guns I’d ever seen before, but I absolutely recognized them as weapons and I did not want to get shot by them.”

“You must have been very frightened.” Satomi’s face showed genuine compassion.

“Yes. And Shepard kept asking me about Cerberus and what they wanted, and I kept laughing and asking them to just drop it because they were carrying the joke on far too long, and finally I asked why she was so stuck on asking me about a dog and could someone please get me a glass of water because being put in stasis makes you really thirsty and they don’t warn you about that in the safety manual.”

“Stasis? How long were you under?”

“It was only supposed to be for a month, but it didn’t happen that way.”

Satomi took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You aren’t going to clarify that, are you?”

“My story isn’t the important one. Has it ever struck you how stupid a name Cerberus was?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Cerberus. It’s a stupid name. I mean, sure, the Illusive Man saw his organization as the watchdogs of humanity, but there were so many better dogs to chose from. I mean, Wishbone would have been a better choice. He was unwaveringly loyal.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get the reference.”

“That’s ok, dear, I got carried away with myself, as an old lady tends to do. What I’m saying is Cerberus, before it was the name of a terrorist organization, was the name of a beloved pet dog who was most famous for letting his guard down and allowing all sorts of folks past who weren’t supposed to be allowed into the underworld. I mean, he was a good enough guardian when it came to keeping out those folks who didn’t really want to get into his master’s domain all that badly, just because he looked fierce as all hell. But if you tossed all three heads a snack or played him a nice enough tune, he’d flop over and beg you to pet his belly before all but walking you through the gates and offering to hold your bag while you waltzed on up to Hades and Persephone and asked them for favors.”

“I hadn’t heard that.”

“Of course not dear, you were born after the Invasion. For your generation the name is so poisoned that the beast which bore the name first is almost never spoken of. It is the same when any evil force takes over a perfectly harmless thing. And you know, since your translators are programmed not to translate things like proper nouns, no one even realizes that Cerberus just means Spot any more. That’s why I like T'Soni, she takes the time to learn other languages, doesn’t let herself become reliant on programs to translate for her. It keeps the poetry in language.”

“So I take it you got used to alien languages without a translator.”

“Yes and no dear. On a ship with so many languages that had developed completely isolated from any language group I’d ever encountered, it was impossible for me to follow along like I could to some extent with French or German. Yeah, they’re different from English, but they share common ancestors, have some words that are similar enough that I can get the gist of a sentence if not the exact meaning. But Turian languages come with vocalizations that humans are simply incapable of recreating. So I allowed Commander Shepard to buy me a low-end omni-tool with a translator program so that I could have conversations with my shipmates. And so I could properly apologize for the animatronic thing. By that time Garrus was laughing about it and had turned it into a running joke, but I still felt like a bit of an asshole.”

“What do you mean you allowed her to buy it for you?”

“I didn’t like letting her buy me things like that. She got me some clothes, shampoo, the necessities, you know? A Commander’s salary is nice enough, and she had plenty of resources as a Specter, but I still promised to pay her back. I didn’t get the chance, but I was saving up to do so.” Penny’s voice hitched, and she paused a moment to take a sip of water. Satomi pretended not to notice Penny swipe at her eyes.

“We’ve heard rumors that the Commander could be very generous with her resources. Some have said she went too far, using Alliance funds to pay off the debts of young Quarians when the money should have gone to human interests.”

Penny’s expression turned dark. “Don’t do that. I know it’s your job to look at things from every angle possible and to get at the heart of the story, but don’t play that game with me. It’s below you.”

“I’m sorry?” Satomi asked, a warning in her voice.

“You will forgive an old woman forgetting her manners, but do not try to corner me into getting defensive about her moral character.”

“I do not at all mean she was a bad person, only that there are many who say, in her position, she had cause to be a bit more tactful with how she managed the government’s money.” Satomi straightened up in her seat, crossing her arms.

Penny took a deep breath. “I suppose if that’s the worst you’re going to pull out I should be grateful. And believe me, I have heard all the rumors.” Penny waived her hand in the air for punctuation. “A person gets bigger than life like that, and before you know, everyone either wants to elevate them to godhood or tear them down and make them less than a person. Everyone who has ever encountered them comes out of the woodwork with a story, and everyone else takes these little nuggets of information – true or no – and runs with them.

“I’ve heard all the stories.” Penny continued, cutting Satomi off when she tried to talk again. “The eyewitness accounts that she was horribly rude and full of herself, bulldozing over everyone in her way. And I’ve heard stories of how compassionate and kind she was. I’ve heard she cured famines and ended droughts, and I’ve heard that she was a bully who headbutted Krogan and punched out reporters.” Penny paused to give a pointed look. “The truth was, she was human. She did headbutt more than one Krogan, and she helped a colony put an end to its food shortage. And she did punch a reporter, but only the one. And since you asked, she did not spend government resources on helping out lost Quarians, and she certainly didn’t spend them on me. The money she spread around to help out those who were in a tight spot came out of her own pockets, even in times when I know she didn’t have much to spare.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. Now you can argue as some have that she, herself, was a government resource, and therefore any of her own money was also the government’s, but then we’d know you were just being argumentative and reaching for a story that isn’t really there, and I would have to say I’d overestimated you as a reporter.”

“You seem quick to tell me about my own job.” Satomi said.

“Yes, well, in a former life, I was like you. So don’t try to pull any more cheap tricks and we can get back to this interview.”

“Fair enough.” Satomi’s voice was more reserved. She bought herself a few moments to regroup by shifting information around on her omni-tool’s screen. “Tell me more about who Commander Shepard was as a person, then. You seem to be very passionate about her.”

“Yes, I am.” Penny started to relax again. “It is important to me that she be seen as a whole person. She wasn’t perfect. But she was the best of all of us. She firmly believed that all the races and cultures would do better to cooperate and work together toward a common goal instead of fighting against one another. In that way she was an idealist. She never lost that either. That’s why she did what she did in the end, you know. But, at the same time, she recognized the reality of the galaxy she lived in, and was willing to fight whenever it was necessary. But did you know she always tried to find another solution?”

“I had heard she preferred diplomacy, yes.” Satomi agreed. “And that she often urged government officials to find peaceful solutions.”

“Scolded them is what she did. And was never afraid to throw down a good, 'I told you so,' even to the council’s face. She knew she was right and she did everything she could to make her voice heard. And that includes when she was dealing with Cerberus.

“You know, I can see your assistant in the corner flinch every time I say that word. There were names when I grew up that elicited that same response. But listen, just because she tried to reason with them, doesn’t mean she didn’t see them as the enemy.”

“Historians tell us that there was a time she worked for Cerberus in the years before the Invasion. Several people would use that to say she wasn’t the hero many would make her out to be. Do you have any insight to refute this claim?”

“Now that’s a bit better. In truth, I didn’t know her when the Normandy was a Cerberus vessel, but I witnessed a conversation between her and one of her teammates regarding her time with them. He was having difficulty trusting her because of that very thing, and she was insistent that she didn’t hold any allegiance with them. I got the sense that they had argued this point several times, but I only was around for the end of the discussion.”

“And was this team member Kaidan Alenko?”

Penny’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.”

“We had heard he had quarreled with the Commander on more than one occasion regarding her connections to Cerberus.”

“Yes, well, it did put quite the strain on their relationship. It almost ruined their friendship entirely, if I’m honest with you. But when they brought her back, she didn’t have many options. They offered her funding and access to the people and equipment needed to put an end to what the collectors were doing. They thought they were in control of her, but they never were. Not from the moment she regained consciousness.”

“And you believe her about this.”

“Yes. At the time I didn’t have the background or knowledge to really understand what the argument was about. As far as I knew, bringing people back from the dead could be an every day occurrence. But she was firm that she broke ties with them as soon as she accomplished what she’d set out to do. And her actions and her words convinced Kaidan, and in the end he trusted her wholly. And I trust his opinion on the matter more than anyone’s.”

“And why is that?” Satomi asked, a cautious smile playing at the corners of her lips.

Penny frowned for a moment, then said, “As he already gave me his blessing to talk about it, I’ll tell you.” Jessa and several other members of the crew leaned forward. Penny pause for dramatic effect, then said, “They were lovers.”

Jessa mouthed, “Yessssss,” and held out her hand to accept a chocolate bar from the young man who had done Penny’s makeup.

Penny held up her hand and said, “I mean, fully and completely in love, and solidly together. I know there are rules against that sort of thing within the ranks, but she’s been dead fifty years, and he’s a Specter now, so there isn’t much the Alliance can do about it, is there?”

“No, I suppose not.” Satomi said, realizing her ratings were going to spike if she could get the Alliance to let her air this.

“And in their defense, they did manage to contain themselves until they were headed to what was likely a suicide mission. They just both managed to survive it.

“I can tell you it tore him apart when the SR-1 was destroyed. And even worse when he saw her again on Horizon, stepping out of a ship that bore Cerberus insignia. He couldn’t trust her and it broke them apart. By the time they mended that hurt, it was too late, she was with someone else.”

“Vakarian” Satomi said.

“Yes, and mind you I got his permission to verify this before he passed. But for Kaidan, he knew he couldn’t win her back, that trusting her and rejoining her on the Normandy meant he would have to watch her be happy with someone else, and he still chose to fight at her side and trust that she was in no way under Cerberus’ sway.”

“Not a lot of people seem to understand her relationship with Vakarian.” Satomi said.

“No, people don’t. The whole galaxy is full of people who can figure out how to visit each other’s planets, but never quite figured out how to stop being racist. But listen, don’t you ever let anyone tell you a single bad thing about the two of them. They were very good for each other, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.”

“And you aren’t just saying that because of your own relationship with Kaidan Alenko?”

Penny flashed her a warning look, her eyes turning to steel. “I say it because I loved that woman. All of us did. We were her family. She made us into family. That’s why I made this.”

Penny reached into her bag and pulled out several ornately bound volumes. Satomi’s eyes widened as Penny opened one covered in leather that had been dyed red with the image of a dragon pressed into the front. She flipped through the pages, showing every inch had been filled with careful handwriting. She held it proudly on display as several of Satomi’s crew crept closer to get a better look. “I didn’t have regular duties on the Normandy, like I said, so I decided to make myself the unofficial record keeper of the ship. I met with every member of the crew, everyone who flew on the ship, even for a short while. When we docked, I sat down with former crew members, and I asked them questions about her and what she was like before I met her, and all the missions they’d been on, and how everyone believed in her and what she as trying to do. Even those who no longer flew at her side were out in the galaxy doing her work. I wrote it all down, every last word they said. I knew the Reapers would wipe out all the records they could find, but I also knew if I buried these accounts in an air-tight box deep in the sands of some planet with lifeforms just showing the beginnings of sentience, that eventually someone might dig them up and figure out the stories. And paper books don’t give off an electromagnetic signature that the machines could trace in their quest to obliterate all traces of our cycle. It was my gift to future generations, should we fail in our mission and the Reapers succeed in wiping out all of the beacons Dr. T'Soni planted. The only stories I didn’t get that I wish I had were those of Admiral Anderson. I never met him in person, but goddess, I wish I had.

“I wanted to read a short passage to you, if you don’t mind.” She said, turning to a page she’d marked with a ribbon.

“Please, go ahead.” Satomi said.

“It was from my interview with Jack. Now, I’m going to leave out some of what she said because otherwise the censors will get over-excited and your viewers will just hear a long series of beeps, but otherwise it is word-for-word.”

“Fair enough.”

Penny cleared her throat, then read, “Shepard? Shit, what do you want to know? I mean, shit, what really is there to say? Alright, listen, I’m not going to tell you much, because she’d probably kick my ass if I told you something embarrassing, but she’s good people. Not a whole lot of people would do what she did for me. But if you want the real story about Shepard or whatever, you’re going to have to ask someone else.

“Alright, fine. She’s a bad-ass bitch who doesn’t take shit from anyone – not the counsel, not the Illusive Man, no one. And she always comes out on top. But you know what? She takes care of people. She makes people feel like they belong to something greater than themselves. Like they matter. Shit. Look, that’s all you’re getting out of me. And if you make me look like some sappy little bitch I will kick your ass from here to eternity, you got me?”

Penny replaced the ribbon and closed the book. “Jack was the toughest to reach out to. After the Invasion she and her students went on to re-open Grissom Academy and ensure it remained a safe place for biotics to train.”

Satomi nodded. “From what I hear about her, I’m impressed you got that much out of her. These must have cost you a lot of money.” She gestured to the books. “No one keeps these any more. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this outside a museum.”

“They would have been, except I was fortunate in that the individual who was keeping me on display had several other relics. Dr. T'Soni had brought them onto the ship for herself – she was an anthropologist before she was a Reaper-slayer you know – and when she discovered several of the journals were still blank and had merely been decorative, she let me have them because I asked nicely. And because I promised to give her full access to anything I wrote in them.”

“Why was she particularly interested in what you had to say?” Satomi asked.

“Because, my dear,” Penny said, clearly having enjoyed toying with her, “I was born at the end of the twentieth century, before humans discovered the Prothean artifacts on Mars, before the First Contact War with the Turians. I was the first human to be put into suspended animation as a part of a trial run by NASA – the United States’ space agency at the time – because it was being considered as a viable way to make deep space travel possible. We were just starting to take steps toward the launch our first manned mission to Mars, and it was one hell of a time to be alive.”

“Then how did you…I’m sorry, I thought the Mars program was pushed back several decades because the first wave of test subjects died.” Satomi said.

Penny nodded somberly. “The others died. And everyone was told I’d died as well. The truth is that my vitals were weak but stable, and they couldn’t figure out how to bring me out of it without killing me. There was a faulty circuit in the pods. I’m told it was like the Challenger explosion all over again. The damn thing was so finicky Dr. Chakwas and EDI working together were barely able to revive me.

“At first I was kept in a back room in the hopes that eventually technology would be such that I could be returned to the world of the living. Then, I’m told, funding was cut, people were laid off, and I was forgotten about for several decades.

“When someone stumbled on me I was still alive, but still in too tenuous a state to dare attempt to wake up. There are about thirty years after that I wasn’t able to account for, even with the help of EDI, and then I turned up as a part of a collection of curios in some wealthy family’s home. I was passed down from generation to generation in their mansion on some backwoods colony where Alliance officials wouldn’t catch wise to the fact that they had a living human on display in their parlor.”

“So why on earth did Cerberus go after you?”

“I told you, clerical error. See, my name wasn’t Penny Addams back then. It was Sara, Sara Jamison. Without the h.”  
“I’m sorry, but wasn’t Sarah Jamison the name of the first human to encounter Prothean tech on Mars?”

“Yes, but she spells her name with an h. I do not. And there was a rumor going around that she’d been cryogenically frozen to preserve her alongside some of the other great historical figures of her time or some shit like that. It wasn’t true. She died of old age with her two daughters and six cats around her bed. She had a damn good life. Me, I just happened to have my name spelled wrong on the label of my pod. The Illusive Man must have thought I was her just like the Whitcombs did. You know, the people who kept me in my own little display case. I suppose he hoped I might have some secret squirreled away in my brain that would help him in his mission to control the Reapers. But I was just a secretary that had been laid off and needed the forty grand NASA was offering up to allow them to put me into stasis for a month. I had broken up with my fiance a few months before, and my sister had agreed to watch my cat, so it seemed worth it.”

“That is one hell of a story.”

“Look it up if you don’t believe me. I’ll wait.” Penny gestured to Satomi’s omni-tool, glowing about her wrist. “TIME Magazine put my face on the cover, along with the other test subjects. The headline read, “The Price of Human Achievement” or some shit like that. It was their August issue. They, at least, spelled my name right. You can even look up the Whitcombs. Junius Whitcomb was the most recent to have me in his possession. Archer Whitcomb was the one, I’m told, who acquired me.” She watched with a smile while Satomi’s crew searched frantically on their own devices.

After a few moments Jessa pulled up a side-by-side comparison of the TIME cover and a holo that had been taken the day after the Invasion had ended. “It’s unmistakable. It’s you.” She said, walking forward to put the image in frame.

“You’ll also find that the only references anywhere to the religious colony I supposedly grew up in came from statements given by Commander Shepard and her crew. There is no other evidence. Not that anyone looked for it. There was enough to clean up, the search for my commune got lost in the shuffle.”

“That was something I’d noticed when I was doing my research. I was going to ask you about it.” Satomi said.

“Well, there, now you have your answer. It didn’t exist.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because fifty years is a long time to carry a secret. And because I told her that we were all going to get together for the fiftieth anniversary. She told me that if she didn’t make it, I should take all my books out and tell the story for her. She was half joking, but only half. I think it would tickle her to know that I’d done it.”

“So do you plan on publishing these stories?” Satomi asked, her fingers reaching toward them without quite daring to touch.

“Oh I don’t know, haven’t figured that part out yet. I still don’t fully trust translators, and it wouldn’t be right to keep it only in English. I haven’t decided. I might.”

“So after all this time you still turn yours off?”

“Oh yes, rather often. You know, the Illusive Man was banking on our over-reliance on translators when he put together Sanctuary.”

“You mean where he lured people in with the promise of protection and then experimented on them.”

“Yes. At the risk of Godwining myself, he acted like a right Nazi bastard with that stunt.”

“Godwining?” Satomi asked, head cocked to the side.

“Never mind. See, it was never broadcast that it was there, as that would bring the Reapers gunning right for it, so he and his people relied entirely on word-of-mouth to let folks know it was out there. He called it an elysium, used that as a descriptor to avoid it becoming a proper noun so that the translators would do their thing. And his people only spoke it to those who didn’t speak Greek or Latin or English or any of the other human languages that contained the word. They said it to those speaking Japanese or Navajo or language groups that were completely unrleated. It got translated back and forth a few times, and before you knew it, people were calling it Sanctuary. He accepted that name for it, and that’s what those who worked there started to call it, but it was just an elysium when it started.”

“What is the significance of that?”

“The Elysian Fields were within the domain guarded by Cerberus. The dog, not the assholes.”

“I thought Hades ruled over Hell.” Jessa said helpfully, earning her a stern look from Satomi. Shamed, Jessa slunk back into the corner of the room.

“He ruled over Tartarus, the place of torment often compared to hell, yes, but also the Elysian Fields and the Shadow Lands, the three places one’s soul could end up in the afterlife among the ancient Greeks. They were all three in the underground, and all three were ruled over by Hades. All three guarded by Cerberus. The cocky bastard was playing a fucking joke because he thought he was smarter than all of us. He didn’t expect a young woman with nothing to lose who converted to paganism when she was thirteen to show up on the Normandy.”

“So you were the one who figured it out then?”

“Oh heavens no, not really. I just helped give Commander Shepard a heads up. It was Traynor who tracked Kai Leng to Sanctuary. I was the one who spotted the inconsistency in language because I’d been listening to conversations around the citadel with my translator turned off. Everyone was pretty startled when I spoke up. I always stayed quiet when they were talking about the war because I never had anything worth adding to the conversation. I mean, I was still proud of myself for figuring out how to change the font settings on my omni-tool without asking for help and that I didn’t scream out loud the first time I encountered a hannar. But this was something I’d noticed.

“So when we were flying to Sanctuary I went to Shepard. She was…not in a good way. It was the only time she was ever really defeated during the entire fight against the Reapers, right from the beginning on Eden Prime. She was reading up on all the info Traynor could pull up on Sanctuary, but mostly she looked like she’d had the shit kicked out of her and was trying to hide it. I like to think my interruption was a welcome distraction.

“I sat down next to her and told her that I’d noticed a change in the words people had been using when referring to Sanctuary. How it had gone from being a descriptor to a proper noun. How, very early on, I had heard someone call it an elysium when my translator was turned off, and a haven when it was turned on, and how that had struck me as so odd. And I told her what I told you, about Hades and the underworld.”

“What did she say?”

“She believed me. And she ordered her squad to pack extra ammo. We already knew Kai Leng had gone there. I just gave her a heads up on what else she was going to find. After she got back to the ship, she tracked me down to thank me. I was shaking from what I’d heard she’d encountered.”

“It really got to you.”

Penny took an unsteady breath. “I told you my grandfather fought in the Battle of Normandy, which is true. That was my mother’s father. My father’s father, my other grandfather? He didn’t fight in the war. He and half of his family had been smuggled out of Germany when he was a teenager. The other half of his family perished in Sobibor.

“Shepard knew this. And bless her, she wanted to comfort me when she was the one who needed a goddamn break. We all knew it was close to the end. You could feel it. Everyone knew that things were winding up for the final show down. And she, she was trying to comfort a poor, scared girl who was so completely lost. She told me that my figuring that out was a major asset, that it helped her and her team prepare and stay alive. I know it wasn’t nearly as big as the dozen times Traynor found a crucial clue. It was one small, little thing, but she made me feel like I’d helped save the galaxy.”

“I suppose in a way you did. If she hadn’t made it through Sanctuary to get back to Earth…”

“I suppose, but she had a strong squad, good armor, and she was a hell of a shot. She would have figured it out quickly enough and pulled through. I didn’t save her life, I just made it a little easier. That’s all you can do, you know? That’s why she always did little things like return lost lockets and pay off the debts of young Quarians. It was because she knew that it would make a difference for that person. When saving the galaxy felt like an impossible burden, it was something she could do. Something she could control. Kindness was defiance for her, and she encouraged everyone she encountered to do the same. That’s what you should be taking from her story.”

“Was there anything else you’d like to share with us, now that you’ve blown us all away?”

“No, that is all, thank you for this opportunity. Now, you keep asking the good questions and stop with the cheap, leading shit and you’ll be alright.” Penny said, starting to put her books back into her bag.

“There is one more thing I would like to ask you, if you don’t mind?” Satomi asked.

“Oh go ahead, I suppose one more won’t hurt.”

“What made you take on the name Penny?”

“Oh, that was my own little joke on the Illusive Man.” She said. “Penny is short for Persephone, Hades’ queen, and co-ruler of the underworld. She could make Cerberus act like a little, harmless puppy when she wanted to. She took the bite out of him.”

Satomi nodded. “Fitting. And why the last name Addams? Why didn’t you take Alenko’s name?”  
“Oh, I did for a time, but I use my pretend-maiden name more often when I go out, it attracts less attention.”

“So then, I’m going to press my luck and ask why you picked the name Addams at all?”

“Because Morticia is my hero.”

“I see, of course. That reference I get.”

“Good. Was there anything else you wanted to know before I head back home? I’ve got an awful long trip ahead of me.”

“No, thank you so much for coming out and speaking with us today. Your insight has been invaluable.”

“Oh no dear, thank you.” Penny smiled and patted Satomi's hand.

The light on the camera went dark and Satomi’s crew began packing up their gear. Penny put the last book in her bag and hesitated for a moment before getting out of her chair. “Satomi?” She said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

“Yes?” Satomi asked, now entirely herself again, no longer wearing her reporter face.

“You should show how much you care more in your interviews. Stop trying to be just another generic, smiling anchor.”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“I saw how you looked at the books. You weren’t thinking how much of a fortune they could make you if you were able to get them out of my hands. You looked at them with the reverence they’re due. You still love the stories people tell. If you don’t let it shine through you’re going to start believing the lie.”

“I don’t…” Satomi started.

“Yes you do, dear. And you’re smart enough to know that words shape reality no matter what language they’re spoken in.”

“Yes, right. You’re right. Are you going to publish those some day?”

“Oh, they’ve already been willed to a museum with permission to publish after I’ve passed away. For now, they’re my memories. I don’t have the energy to go through the circus releasing them will cause.”

“But you were willing to give this interview?” Satomi asked.

“Yes, to you. Because I made a promise. But this is all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now.” Jessa hurried to get the door and Penny thanked her. “Think on what I said, now. I’ll be waiting to see the final cut.” And she walked out.


End file.
